Topic: Not responding!

[dj1111s]

My Weatherlink software has been the most dependable part of my weather equipment and software.  It has been chugging along uploading to WL, CWOP and WU without complaint.  Until recently.  About once a week it stops uploading and I find Weatherlink is dead and says the dreaded "Not responding".  It happened this morning again at 6:00 am (made me late for work  ).  I checked Weatherlink from my laptop and saw its last upload was 5:59.  When this happens I have to reboot the computer to get things back to normal again.  Simply ending and restarting the program will not do it.

After getting home today, and installing 12 new Windows updates, I checked the events logs on the weather computer.  Interestingly I found 4 that happened at 5:59:58, 6:00:04, 6:00:08 and 6:00:13 named "DNS Client Events".  Described as "Name resolution for the name wpad.Belkin timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded."  Before I start researching this online I thought I'd post my issue to see if anyone knows what this is all about.

Charter recently had a major problem with their DNS servers.  It seems fixed now but looking through the log this event has happened a lot lately.  My router is setup as "Automatic from ISP" for DNS servers.

Thanks, Dan.

[BigOkie]

My Weatherlink software has been the most dependable part of my weather equipment and software.  It has been chugging along uploading to WL, CWOP and WU without complaint.  Until recently.  About once a week it stops uploading and I find Weatherlink is dead and says the dreaded "Not responding".  It happened this morning again at 6:00 am (made me late for work  ).  I checked Weatherlink from my laptop and saw its last upload was 5:59.  When this happens I have to reboot the computer to get things back to normal again.  Simply ending and restarting the program will not do it.

After getting home today, and installing 12 new Windows updates, I checked the events logs on the weather computer.  Interestingly I found 4 that happened at 5:59:58, 6:00:04, 6:00:08 and 6:00:13 named "DNS Client Events".  Described as "Name resolution for the name wpad.Belkin timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded."  Before I start researching this online I thought I'd post my issue to see if anyone knows what this is all about.

Charter recently had a major problem with their DNS servers.  It seems fixed now but looking through the log this event has happened a lot lately.  My router is setup as "Automatic from ISP" for DNS servers.

Thanks, Dan.

Change your DNS servers to use something other than your ISP.  8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 are good ones to start with (Google Public DNS).  Or, if you must use your ISP, find out what the IP address is, and use one of the ones I mentioned above as a secondary in case the ISP DNS servers fail.  I haven't used my ISP's DNS servers in 5 years.

[dj1111s]

Change your DNS servers to use something other than your ISP.  8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 are good ones to start with (Google Public DNS).  Or, if you must use your ISP, find out what the IP address is, and use one of the ones I mentioned above as a secondary in case the ISP DNS servers fail.  I haven't used my ISP's DNS servers in 5 years.

When Charter had their issues with their DNS I tried using the Google DNS as well as another set of public ones.  I could not get my router to connect to them.  Then after Charter fixed their problems I could not get my router to connect at all.  Had to reset to factory specs to get it to work ultimately.  I guess I'll try again.  If the router gives me any crap it's time to buy a new one.  Thanks.

[dj1111s]

Interesting Website.  https://www.whatsmydns.net/dns/usa/charter.html

[dj1111s]

I changed the DNS settings in my router to use Charter's as the primary and Google's 8.8.4.4 as secondary.  It's working fine.  I'll have to watch the event logs to see if it made a difference.  I find it interesting that Charter has only one DNS address with no secondary.

Thanks for your help, Dan.

[dj1111s]

I may have found the real problem.

Back when Charter was having their DNS problems I tried entering the Google DNS numbers in my router.  But it still would not connect.  After Charter was fixed my router still would not connect no matter what DNS settings I used.  Finally I pushed the reset button on the router to get it to connect.  Since then it seems the problems started with Weatherlink.  Earlier I mentioned I found some interesting stats in the event logs in my computer.  The last time Weatherlink stopped, the time matched exactly to a DNS event in the logs.  Well several days later I was looking through all the settings in my router when I came across the "Self Healing" feature.  It's been on all the time but I think the reset either woke it up or reset it to some factory spec.  The timer setting was set to do this "reboot" at 6 am Tuesday.  The very time Weather link went down while my computer recorded a DNS incident.  That feature is now turned off and we'll see if it was the culprit.

[dj1111s]

Well knock on wood.  I first tried entering Charter's DNS as the primary and one of Google's as the secondary.  Seemed better for a while but eventually Weatherlink did lockup.  I then changed my router's DNS settings to use Google's 8.8.8.8 as primary and 8.8.4.4 as secondary.  Haven't had a problem since.  Again knocking on wood and crossing all fingers.  Makes me wonder if it was Charter that has caused random problems in the past.  Like never getting uploads to WBug to work reliably.